At the edge of the Allen outlet mall, on a patch of grass visible from the street, a makeshift memorial sprouted into a monument of grief.
In the days after a gunman opened fire at the mall, mourners piled grocery store flowers, stuffed animals and handwritten letters beside a cluster of wooden crosses. Eight people were killed, seven were wounded, and so many more devastated. They came to this spot to pray, to cry, to hug strangers.
One week after the May 6 mass shooting, volunteers and firefighters dismantled the memorial and sorted through mementos.
Now, as the one-year mark of the shooting nears, Allen faces an impossible question: After the candlelight vigils end and the nation’s collective attention moves on, how does it tell the story of its most horrific day in a way that honors the victims?
A permanent memorial will be unveiled next week, said Megan Hakes, a spokesperson for the mall’s owner, Simon Property Group. The city of Allen is hosting a remembrance event Monday, but has no plans to erect its own memorial.
Asked what he envisions for a memorial, Mayor Baine Brooks said, “While I have no specific visions for the memorial’s design, I hope it serves to honor victims and symbolizes the enduring strength of the Allen community.”
Others in the community have more specific ideas.
Alissa Wallace, who lives in Allen and leads the Collin County chapter of Moms Demand Action, which fights for gun reform, said a memorial should honor the victims and survivors while addressing the roots of the violence.
“We need to acknowledge the hate-motivated violence that targeted our community, and that gun violence is in fact an issue within our community,” Wallace said.
Cheryl Jackson, who acted as a sort of mayor for the makeshift memorial, said she envisions angels, figurative or literal, as part of a permanent memorial. Like the early memorial, she said she hopes it will be a place where people can come together.
“We’re all in this together. We need each other,” said Jackson, an Allen native who now lives in McKinney. “A memorial should show that we’ll never forget what happened.”
Amid an epidemic of gun violence, mass shooting memorials have become a fixture in the U.S. Some open only months later, as is the case of the shooting at an El Paso Walmart in 2019. Others, such as at Sandy Hook Elementary, open years later.
No playbook exists, and each community responds differently.
In Uvalde, artists painted giant murals downtown of the 19 students and two teachers killed in the 2022 Robb Elementary shooting, and community members are considering adding a permanent memorial downtown.
At First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, where a gunman killed more than two dozen people in 2017, artists and contractors transformed the building into a chilling memorial with 26 white chairs — including one for the unborn baby of a pregnant victim — bearing each victim’s name painted in gold. Church members voted in 2021 to demolish the building due to structural issues and build a memorial in its place.
After a gunman killed 23 people and wounded 22 at a Walmart in El Paso, the store’s headquarters asked SWA Group, a global architecture firm with an office in Dallas, to design a memorial to honor the victims, many of whom were store employees.
Architects Gerdo Aquino, the company’s co-CEO, and Ying-yu Hung, a managing principal, arrived in El Paso to find thousands of mementos — cards, photographs and candles — scattered for blocks. They would need to transform that outpouring of devastation into a singular monument.
After consulting with store employees, the Los Angeles-based architects designed the Grand Candela, a 30-foot tower with columns of perforated metal, one for each life lost. During the day, the gold metal shimmers in the sunlight. At night, interior lights make it glow like a candle. The tower, which can be seen on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, opened just three months after the shooting.
When it was unveiled, Hung recalled watching people gently touch the metal, as if connecting with their loved ones.
“This was a way to take some of the weight off,” Aquino said. “It gave people a place to go.”
In Sandy Hook, Conn., where a gunman killed 26 people in December 2012, the process of building a memorial took roughly a decade. Set in a quiet wooded area, the site is within view of the new Sandy Hook Elementary School. The new school was built on the same property as the former one, which was torn down after the shooting.
Ben Waldo, an architect with SWA, designed a network of circling paths that connect to one another. At the center, a manmade water feature sits in a granite basin, and 26 names are engraved in the top of a stone wall. A young sycamore tree sprouts from an island in the middle, representing the young age of many of the victims. The memorial is meant to provide a spot of solitude and reflection.
Can a memorial, or any place, help us heal?
“It’s an acknowledgement. It can’t erase trauma. That’s always there,” Waldo said. “But for families and friends who lost loved ones, it’s an acknowledgement, and that’s powerful.”
